Sexual selection is a cost to the offspring
Queens University researchers found that the pursuit of attractive partner can be more dangerous for children. Using a virtual game of dating in the fruit fly, a biology professor Adam Chippindale and graduate student Alison Pischedda found that mating with a suitable partner actually leads to much lower rates of success reproduction in the next generation. The research also raises questions about how masculine and feminine traits may be expressed by genes. The results, published in the November issue of iPLoS Biology, suggest rather a change in evolutionary thought: on average, the lowest pair of children gives a better quality, while the maximum torque produced the worst quality of children .The researchers measured the legacy of the Queens of the fitness (quality and
quantity of children) with samples of men of high and low fitness and a group of women of low and high ability to find out what happens as a result of sexual selection, the process Darwin that organisms compete for and choose their mates. In some traditional models, sexual selection is the search to provide offspring with good genes to increase their reproductive success. However, the group Chippindale suspect that things were not so simple, at least in flies.If sexually antagonistic genes or genes that benefit from a gender over the other, widespread, and women, the high-fitness males seeks, finds that children produce high quality, but this will negatively affect their daughters, says Dr. Chippindale, Canada Research Chair in Evolutionary Genetics.The results of researchsupports the idea that sexually antagonistic genes exert powerful effects and live mostly on the X chromosome, females who spend on their children. So when women choose mates see no benefit for childrens success and pay only the cost of less-fit girls, says Dr. Chippindale. Sexually antagonistic genes, may be harmful or compromise fitness by reducing fertility of the opposite sex. Dr. Chippindale suggests that this phenomenon
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